Hello readers, I hope you’re well.
It’s always a great day when Microsoft Teams gets a feature that’s so long overdue and useful that it changes how you do something completely. This is one of those features in my opinion.
Background
If you organise and attend meetings in Teams you’ll inevitably want to record the odd meeting so it can be re-watched by participants that couldn’t make it or otherwise share with an interested party. Sharing internally within your team or company is pretty easy. Even easier if the internal user attended the meeting. They just go to the chat created by the meeting and the recording is there along with the other posts.
Just click on it and that opens the playback window right there inside Teams.
You can even search the transcript right from within this window. Useful if you only want to know where you were mentioned and get a list of your actions. Simply tap the magnifying glass to open the search bar and enter your name to get a list of places your name or any other keyword was mentioned. Then tap one of the list items to go straight to the place in the video where the mention happened.
Sounds good right? Yes, but what happens if there are external attendees in the meeting? I’m glad I asked.
External attendees (anyone that doesn’t have a user account in your tenant) still see that meeting in the chat. But annoyingly, they can’t open it. And you get an error message that the video can’t be found.
This is because by default, meeting recordings are stored in Microsoft Stream. And it’s not possible to share videos outside your org from Stream.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been asked why they can’t open the recording directly from the chat…
This is something that I’m sure just about everyone using Teams has raised with someone. And many, including myself, have raised it with Microsoft in one way or the other.
Microsoft has been promising it forever.
Workaround
There has always been a workaround for this. You open up Stream, download the video, save it to OneDrive and share a link from there. Of course you have to remember to do this. And it takes time to download, it takes time to move the file and even after it has moved, it has to sync (which takes time) before you can share it. Then you have to copy the link and send an email to the person that needs it. Blah, blah, blah
I’m used to this workflow, but it’s a pain. But it just got a whole lot easier.
What’s Changed?
Microsoft announced recently that they were allowing admins to change the storage location for recordings from Stream to OneDrive.
This is great news because OneDrive does allow external sharing. And admins can get super granular on conditions and rules/governance.
How to do it?
It’s pretty simple actually. All you (or your admin) need to do is change the storage location for recordings in Teams from Stream to OneDrive for Business (ODFB)…
Set-CsTeamsMeetingPolicy -Identity Global -RecordingStorageMode "OneDriveForBusiness"
…and wait a bit. I changed mine and it took a couple of days to take effect (I think). Then discovered that existing meetings still saved the recording to Stream. So if you have an existing meeting or a series of meetings, you should just cancel them and make a new meeting. I was also testing using meet now so I know it took a couple of days. I’m sure it will get better as it rolls out.
Microsoft has a post on it here.
And a recent video
Then what?
Firstly, the behaviour changes a lot once you move the storage location. You can’t press play in Teams and play the recording right there. If you (the organiser) clicks the link, the video opens in a browser and starts playing.
Close it and you’re in OneDrive in the browser
Secondly, annoyingly, external meeting attendees still can’t click on the meeting thumbnail in the chat. It opens the browser, but in my experience it asked for an email which then sent me a one time pass code and even then I couldn’t get in.
Then I just hit share in OneDrive and sent a link
Then I was in
Okay so not perfect, but a lot better. You can also just create your own sharing permissions and add passwords and expiry and all that and then just copy the link and either paste it in the chat or just send it in an email (better).
There are some other caveats
Frequently asked questions
Where will the meeting recording be stored?
- For non-Channel meetings, the recording is stored in a folder named Recordings that is at the top level of the OneDrive that belongs to the person who started the meeting recording. Example:recorder’s OneDrive for Business/Recordings
- For Channel meetings, the recording is stored in the Teams site documentation library in a folder named Recordings. Example:Teams name – Channel name/Documents/Recordings
Who has the permissions to view the meeting recording?
- For non-Channel meetings, all meeting invitees, except for external users, will automatically get a personally shared link. External users will need to be explicitly added to the shared list by the meeting organizer or the person who started the meeting recording.
- For Channel meetings, permissions are inherited from the owners and members list in the channel.
More in this post https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/MicrosoftTeams/tmr-meeting-recording-change#frequently-asked-questions
And that’s all folks!
If this or any other post has been useful, why not take a second to subscribe, like and share.
ucstatus.com 